Vincent Vega

April19th,2010

The truth is, I am having a hard time. I’m hesitant to write this post because I should be showering rather than posting but mainly because I don’t think I can handle all of the judgement that could potentially go on from writing this post.

You know how us Moms and future Moms can be when it comes to babies, right? We all know everything? We all know what’s right and what’s wrong and we’ve all said “if that were my baby, I’d do this not that ...” And maybe you’ve never said it, but you’ve thought it.

Yes, you have.

It’s pretty awful but we can’t help it, that’s what makes us mothers, I guess. But I’m hoping as a human you’ll just listen to me and let me talk this out, let me share this with you because I know I am not alone in my thoughts. Somewhere, someone can completely relate to what I’m saying here. And if not, that’s okay, I need to share. This is my therapy.

Elijah is a difficult baby. The day he was born, he was the coolest little baby, totally laid back, just laid around sucking on his perfect little fingers, hanging out with his family, I even called him Vincent Vega because he was so cool.

But then the first day ended and he wasn’t so easy going anymore. When he was three days old, he was up for seven hours straight, crying.

A newborn.

Seven hours.

I’m not going to lie to you, it’s been downhill ever since. And not downhill in the sense that I’m going to jump off of a bridge because I am not. Downhill in the sense that this tiny baby who was supposed to just “eat, sleep and poop?” Well, that was false advertising. He cries.

ALL OF THE TIME.

He very rarely has quiet awake time, where he just looks around an takes it all in, in fact, it’s so rare that we all just kind of sit and watch him when he does do it, marveling at this quiet moment of him not in our arms or screaming. I usually grab a camera because “Look! He’s not crying or nursing and his eyes are SO BIG AND BEAUTIFUL and oh crap, he’s crying again.” (as I write this, Brian is walking around with Eli, keeping him calm, it’s peaceful but I feel like I’m taking up Brian’s time by writing this. Mommy guilt at it’s best.)

Eli is a really great nurser, he has beautiful poopy and wet diapers, as of last Monday he was gaining just like he’s supposed to, everything seems to be okay with him except how can that possibly be when he’s obviously trying to tell us something with his little (BUT BIG) cries?

Today I am meeting with a lactation consultant where she is going to watch me nurse, just to rule out any problems there. Eli loves to eat and gets impatient waiting for letdown, he kicks and screams and grabs my nipples, it’s fun. But we manage to work through each session. (thanks to the support of my sister and my best friends.)

At first I thought that this was just the normal newborn phase but after three weeks of feeling like your baby is always miserable? Well, now I’m wondering if there is something else. I’m trying not to feel like a failure but I’m feeling like a failure.

This too shall pass, I KNOW THIS. I know that before I know it he’s going to be working on his math with me at the kitchen table and I know that this time passes so quickly that we often don’t even remember it but honestly, that doesn’t help me RIGHT NOW at this moment.

Comments

A friend sent me a link to this post, as I recently went through something similar with my son. You’ve received much of the same advice I did and it was all so overwhelming. What is right for one baby causes screaming fits in another. I don’t have any advice, but I did want to say thank you for this post and for being honest. The one thing I didn’t find when doing research was others moms who admitted that having a newborn can be hard. Everyone made it seem like smiles, coos and happy parents were the norm. No one ever admitted how hard it can be. It’s nice to see someone willing to admit it because honestly, I think your emotions are far more indicative of what new parents are feeling. Thank you.

*sigh* Some babies are just not happy. My second daughter was like that. She cried every day until she was about four years old. There wasn’t anything wrong, she wasn’t sick or hurt. She just cried. We learned to tune it out and respond to the “real” crying when it happened – and yes, you can tell the difference.

It gets better – our entire family surrvived, and we had two more children after her! She is now a Junior in high school, absolutely beautiful and hardly ever cries. In fact, she’s the most positive and optimistic kid in our entire brood! She’s also amazingly creative and very smart.

A friend sent me this link because she knew I’d relate. And oh how I do. My baby is a hard one, too. Lots of crying. Very little sleeping. No one seems to talk about how freakishly hard it is to be a mom and that if you don’t have a baby who wears cute overalls and coos at strangers in between perfect nursing sessions (oh yeah, and is he sleeping through the night at six weeks yet?), something must be wrong. And we often automatically think that something is wrong with us. The moms. We’re messing our kids up. Awesome. But we’re not. Being a mom is hard. Having a baby is hard. Like, I want to get in my car and drive away forever hard. It is a season, and you know that. Our heads see the reality, but our sleep-deprived everything else has a hard time seeing past the current state of crying… and the baby’s crying, too. You’re not alone. We’re out there. The moms who don’t have it together and have hard babies and wish that things were different. But I think that we’re all like that. Some are just a bit braver in admitting it. So thanks for the honesty and the kindred spirit from Crying Baby World. Enjoy those little moments when you see his big eyes. Those are fun.

Hang in there. I know every baby is different, but I will tell you that my “difficult” (aka. screaming all the time) little baby girl is 14 weeks now and is doing so much better. Not necessarily happy and cooing all the time, but BETTER. The nights of twelve hours of crying are gone, hallelujah and amen.

I feel your pain. You are not alone. Do whatever you can to remain sane and don’t feel guilty for involving daddy.

I truly believe that Dr. Sears Fussy Baby book saved my sanity with my daughter. Well, that and my amazing mother who moved in with us for the first 7 months of her life so I could finish law school.

Apparently it runs in my family, at least with the girls. I even named my blog “Letters After Midnight” based on stories my mom told me about how she would sit up alone (my dad was in flight school and really needed his sleep) at night while I screamed, she cried, and she wrote letters that she never sent just to save her sanity. She often said she should compile them into a book called “Letters After Midnight.”

It is something of a family joke since the last three generations of firstborn girls have been like this (apparently my mom was the same as an infant – my papa would hear my daughter screaming over the phone and just laugh).